


may true be the hearts that love you

by besidemethewholedamntime



Series: at the end of the day all i need is you [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Modern Royalty AU, Non-SHIELD AU, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26595994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: '“Do you ever think about it?”“Think about what?”There’s only the slightest pause before she says, “Our wedding. Do you ever think about what it would be like?”'Fitz and Jemma wonder about the future. Part of my modern royalty AU.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Series: at the end of the day all i need is you [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1934755
Comments: 20
Kudos: 88





	may true be the hearts that love you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zuziuchna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zuziuchna/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, Zuza!! I hope you're having the most wonderful day! You're without a doubt one of the lovliest beans on the planet and this is just a small thing to show how much I love you!
> 
> This is set in my Modern Royalty AU, previous works being 'for where there's sun you'll find and moon' and 'day's sweetest moments are at dawn'. You don't strictly *have* to read one of those first but I would recommend it for things to make a lot more sense. 
> 
> The title is from a traditional Irish blessing (or what Google tells me is one, I apologise if I'm wrong!)
> 
> I hope you enjoy <3

“It’s not often we get to go to nice places like this together.” Fitz looks around them, to the fairy lights draped across the ceiling and the white bouquets of flowers expertly places around the room. “Could get used to it.”

Jemma looks around them also, seeing immediately the beauty that he does, the fairy-tale dream of it all. She has been in many rooms similar to this one, for many of the same events, but never with him the way she is now. That, she thinks, makes all the difference.

“We go to nice places together,” she tells him. “We went camping not that long ago.”

He fixes her with a sardonic look. “First of all, camping with all those creepy crawlies and midges? Not nice. Second of all, I mean actually _going_ to nice places. Coming out together, the both us. Not hiding from everyone else in the far corner of your Highland estate.”

She hums in agreement, conceding that he does have a point. About the creepy crawlies but also about the hiding. There’s something so wonderfully freeing about being here at this wedding reception together, even if at the ceremony they couldn’t so much as glance in the other’s direction. Now they’re at the same table, laughing with each other, touching each other, as though they aren’t who they are, as though they _can._

The lack of her parents but most especially the lack of press has her relaxed to a degree she hasn’t felt in years. She will have been photographed coming in and out of the ceremony, and no doubt the more thorough tabloids have already covered what she was wearing and who she was wearing, and realised it was the same outfit she wore to her cousin’s wedding last May. Jemma can almost picture her mother having a fit at the news when it comes out, and she feels a grim joy at the thought.

“It’s nice like this.” She shuffles in her chair slightly, bringing it closer to him. Having consumed rather a lot of champagne, the act makes her dizzier than it should. “It’s almost like we’re normal.”

“Pft,” he scoffs, also scooting in his chair so there’s not even a hint of space between them. “We’re so far removed from normal that we don’t even know what it is.”

“No, maybe we don’t.” She looks over to the corner of the room where Tom, her assigned protection officer, stands, doing nothing at all to help himself blend in to the background. He may be her favourite of all the officers, but she still wishes he wasn’t here. “We could pretend, though. Just for tonight.”

“Okay,” he says easily, eyes sparkling with the game. “Tonight, we’re just like any other couple, enjoying a mutual friend’s wedding reception, without a single care in the world.”

“We might have some cares,” she says. “About what we’ll have for dinner tomorrow night, whether to buy a larger house.” The only experience of normal life she has are from books and the news, and occasionally the little glimpses she sees when she goes to a school or visits a hospital ward. She has no idea if what she’s saying is accurate, but the champagne and the dreamy violin music coming from the orchestra, plus the warmth radiated from Fitz next to her, means that she doesn’t mind too much if it isn’t.

She doesn’t even realise she’s leaning on him until she feels his shirt underneath her cheek. Wordlessly he lifts his arm until she’s resting against his chest, cocooned in the safe smell of his aftershave but still able to survey the room around her. They must make quite sight together, but then she realises that every sitting couple in the room is doing the same thing and that, for once, they don’t stand out.

“Are we engaged in this scenario of yours?” Fitz asks, and it takes her a moment to recall what it was they were talking about. The champagne has gone to her head; it feels as though it’s full of stars.

“If you like,” she says carefully, still able to recognise the territory they’re headed into.

“Yeah, I think I would.” His voice sounds so far away and then suddenly so very near. “We might care about that.”

“We might, if that’s what any other couple does.”

She looks up at the same moment he looks down, and his resulting smile has her feeling all sorts of fondness, that even without the champagne she couldn’t put a name to. Reaching for his hand, she laces his fingers with her own, trying to knot them together so tightly they can never come apart.

“Jemma,” he says, in low tone that belongs only in the space between them. “How on Earth are your hands still freezing?”

A laugh bubbles out of her, utterly uninhibited. “Are they?” She brings her free hand to her cheek to check and giggles a little at the shock of it against her flushed face. “Oh so they are.”

Fitz laughs, pressing his free hand for a moment over her own. “You never change, do you?”

She thinks it over. “No, I suppose I don’t. Would you ever want me to?”

His answer is immediate. “No,” he murmurs. “Never.”

“I wouldn’t change you either,” she says, leaning further into the safety of his chest. Even over the swelling violin music and the tinkling laughs of happy people, she can still hear his heartbeat. A secret sound only she can hear, it’s as though it’s calling her home.

She closes her eyes, allowing the music and the voices and the _love_ to wash over her. It feels so safe here, in this room with the twinkly lights and gauzy material hanging between the rafters. So safe in fact, that she cannot resist asking a question that she didn’t even realise she wanted an answer to.

“Do you ever think about it?”

“Think about what?”

There’s only the slightest pause before she says, “Our wedding. Do you ever think about what it would be like?”

Fitz stiffens slightly underneath her, so slightly that it’s probably not even noticeable to someone who doesn’t know him as intimately as she does. “Am I allowed to say yes?”

Six proposals and to turn each one down has hurt her differently, bruised something deep down that will never heal. It’s a pain she won’t touch, a memory she won’t let herself remember. They never talk about them, those moments where Fitz opened his heart to her and she, albeit softly, had to close it again. To talk about them would make it real, and neither of them wants to acknowledge what that would mean.

“I do, sometimes,” she continues for him, opening up her eyes. For a second the lights on the ceiling look like stars. Fitz’s first proposal had been under the stars in the place they first met when they were five years old. Everything and yet nothing has changed since then.

“You do?” She can hear the surprise in his voice. She can’t blame him. He’s the romantic one, after all.

“Yes. Not silly things like where it would be or what I would wear, but the important things.” She swallows, throat suddenly dry at this baring of secrets. “How it would feel to walk up the aisle towards you, to say my vows to you… to promise to love you forever in front of everyone who would rather I didn’t.”

Fitz has gone so still that for a second she wonders if he’s heard. Then he exhales, a quiet release of breath that tingles warmly on her scalp, and squeezes very gently the hand that holds hers.

“I wouldn’t notice,” he begins quietly. It should be impossible to hear him over the music but she can hear him louder than anything else. “There wouldn’t be anyone else. It would just be you.”

“We’d be the only people in the world,” she says, imagining such a thing. It’s like a well-worn cardigan or a soft pair of slippers, she has imagined it so often. “Just the two of us.”

There’s a heavy silence that’s so full of everything that cannot be that all they can do it sit in it and try to bear up under its weight. They’re both living the same moment in their heads, a dream so fragile that speaking would simply shatter it, leaving them with nothing but shards.

Fitz clears his throat. “That would be a bit inconvenient,” he tells her, only the smallest struggle evident in his voice. “Us being the only two in the world.”

“Yes,” she sighs. “Now that I think about it, maybe it wouldn’t be such a clever idea. What about our children?”

“Yeah,” he agrees, chuckling. “Couldn’t forget about them.”

Three children, she decides, with his curls and her eyes, freckles dusting their cheeks and grins that split their faces in two. She wants them, and she wants their wedding, but most importantly she just wants a life with him. A life that is their’s to create and shape alone. Something that can’t be taken away.

The desire to have it is suddenly so strong that she jumps up, raising herself out of Fitz’s embrace with such a ferocity that she sees Tom in the corner immediately move towards her. Fitz has to wave him away, and she sees her protection officer shake his head as he goes back to his spot. Maybe she’s just a little bit drunk, but she thinks she sees a hint of a smile on his face.

“What is it?” Fitz asks, forehead puckering in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she promises. “Nothing’s wrong. Will you marry me?”

The lines on his head only seem to deepen. “What?”

“Marry me,” she says, a little breathlessly. Their hands have become disentangled from each other, and she takes them once again and holds tight. “Marry me. Real and proper this time. We’ll go right now to the Palace and tell my parents, we’ll pick up your father on the way and tell them all together.”

“Jemma…”

“No.” She cuts him off with a swift shake of the head, which turns out to be a very bad idea. “No, I’m sick of it. I’m sick of being good and dutiful and making myself miserable in the process. Let’s cause trouble, Fitz. Let’s burn it to the ground.”

“Alright, you little anarchist.” He brushes away some strands of hair from her face, his hands also surprisingly cool. “Let’s just take it down a peg, eh?”

She looks into his eyes, imploring, pleading. They haven’t changed in all of the twenty years she’s known him. So many things have, but his eyes have always remained the same. “What do you say, Fitz? Shall we do it?”

There’s an almost bewildered smile on his face as he shakes his head. “No, Jemma. Not like this.”

Pulling back slightly, she tries not to let her eyes fill up with tears. “Why?”

“Because you don’t mean it,” he says gently. “You don’t want to burn anything down and you don’t want to cause trouble. I know you. You’re drunk, and I wouldn’t say yes to anything you’ll just regret.”

She huffs. “I’m not _that_ drunk.”

“No,” he concedes, “but you’re not sober either. If you still want to set the monarchy on fire in the morning then I’ll think about it.”

“Is this because I’m asking you instead of you asking me?” She folds her arms across her chest, having forgotten how being inebriated makes her more like a toddler than a future monarch. “It’s the twenty-first century, I will have you know.”

His face scrunches rather adorably. Jemma wants to take it in his hands and kiss it all over. “Don’t be ridiculous. As if something as stupid as that would ever be the reason why I’d say no.”

Relenting, she rests her head on his shoulder, his arm coming immediately around her own. “Just once,” she sighs, “I would like to have a proposal that didn’t end in a no,”

Fitz presses a kiss, feather-soft, into her hair, and she feels herself melting even further. “Yeah, it’s kind of annoying, isn’t it?”

Groaning, but knowing he has a point, she can’t do much more than agree. “Definitely. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Oh you’re a funny one you are.” He rests his head against hers, however, and together they watch everyone around the room. It is so very easy to get swept up in the romance of the night, to pretend they are just normal guests at a normal wedding, in the midst of planning their own.

She’s in the middle of watching the bride spin with her new husband, both caught in the dream of the dance, when Fitz whispers in her ear, “You have thought about it, haven’t you?”

Unable to take her eyes from the happy couple, unable to stop imagining her and Fitz in their position, she murmurs, “Thought about what?”

“Ours. Where it would be, what you’d wear. The whole lot.”

She’s glad he can’t see her face, sure that she’s flushing deeply. “Perhaps.”

“Go on then, tell me.”

“Fitz…”

“Hey, I’m the groom. Surely I have a right to know.”

Continuing to look at the bride and groom she sighs with longing. It’s somehow easier if she doesn’t look at him, doesn’t get too close to a dream that she can’t achieve. “Westminster Abbey. I don’t think we’d get away with having it anywhere else. We’d tell the cameras they weren’t allowed into the chapel, of course.”

“Of course,” he says. “What else?”

“I’d have a gown… I don’t know exactly what I want, it always changes, but I’d like a train... something simple but elegant at the same time.”

“You’d look stunning in anything you wore,” he assures her, and she smiles, feeling her heart glow.

“You’d be in a kilt – I know you don’t have a family tartan but we’d find you something – and you’d look so handsome I wouldn’t be able to take my eyes off you.”

He laughs. “No different from usual then.”

She sighs with longing, barely hearing him. Her voice is ever so small and quiet when she says, “And we’d be happy. So unbelievably happy.”

“Ecstatic,” Fitz assures her, and there’s that heavy silence again, in danger of crushing them both, until he clears his throat and asks, “Do I really have to a wear a kilt though?”

“Yes,” she says, scandalised and yet also very relieved. “You do.”

“But I don’t like them,” he whines. “My legs just look all funny.”

“You’d be wearing those long socks.”

“But I don’t have a tartan. You can’t go to your wedding in some strange family’s tartan. Imagine the scandal.”

“I told you that we’d find you something.” She looks up at him, enjoying the petulant frown on his face. “There’s a _Fitz_ simmons tartan. Wouldn’t that be perfect?”

He looks distinctly unimpressed. “You’ve really looked int this, haven’t you?”

She smiles sweetly. “Not at all.”

Except that she has, and much more than she’s willing to share, even in her tipsy state. He would just look so _handsome._

“Nope, I’m sorry.” He shakes his head, and she thinks he’s never looked more adorable than when he’s refusing her something. “I just can’t see myself doing it.”

“What, not even for the millions of viewers across the globe who’ll be seeing them in glorious HD on the BBC?”

“No,” he deadpans. “Funnily enough, not even for them.”

Sometimes it hits her just how lucky she is to have him, to have these moments between them where everything is easy and their words have no real consequences beyond mild exasperation. Sometimes she thinks that she should be content to have this, just this, lest the universe thinks she is ungrateful and decides to take it away.

There’s a slow song playing now, soft and incredibly romantic. “Oh, Fitz!” She turns to him, suddenly filled with the most incredible idea. “Let’s dance!”

He looks remarkably unconvinced but allows himself to be led from the relative security of their table to the dancefloor. They have only just reached the edge, however, when Jemma stumbles, and, for the life of her, can’t find her footing again.

“Alright,” Fitz says, draping one of her arms over his shoulder. “Home time for you I think.”

“You’re just saying that because you don’t want to dance,” she pouts.

“No, I’m saying it because the last thing you need is for headlines tomorrow to be _Next in Line to the Throne Stumbles Through Palace Absolutely Hammered.”_

It’s not the most eloquent headline, but something the Daily Mail would probably publish about her. “I’m not that drunk,” she huffs. “And I don’t want to go back to the Palace.” She looks up at Fitz, hopeful. “Can’t I come back to yours?”

“Afraid not.” Fitz gestures to the corner and Jemma sees the giant shadow that is Tom step away from it and move towards them. “Part of the agreement with your charming mother. Don’t give me that look – you were the one that said yes to it.”

There’s a vague memory in her mind of the terse arrangement with her mother, reached after several not-so-compelling arguments from both sides. “Fine, fine. I suppose I’ll go back.” Then she notices Fitz still propping her up. “I can walk by myself.”

Fitz huffs. “Whatever you say, Princess.” She doesn’t even have time to berate him for the nickname that he’s perfectly aware she hates, and only uses when he desperately wants to get under her skin, before Tom reaches them and he is transferring the weight.

“You got her?” Fitz asks, once Jemma’s arm is now around Tom’s neck.

“Always, sir,” Tom replies, formal as ever, and it might be the champagne once again, but Jemma thinks she sees his cheek twitching in what could be his way of laughing.

Together they say their goodbyes and make their way out to the black Range Rover that’s Jemma’s ride home. Fitz opens the door for her and Tom ever so politely deposits her in the back. She’s about to insist that she’s really not that drunk once again until she realises that even in the black of the car, away from the twinkly lights, she is still seeing stars.

“Well that’s you,” Fitz says, checking she has her seatbelt on. “Text me when you get back, yeah? I’ll see if I can get in tomorrow and make sure you’re not suffering too much.”

She nods, and then immediately regrets it. “Thank you, Fitz. For everything.” She leans back in her seat and closes her eyes, but when the expected slam of the door doesn’t come she opens them again, squinting at Fitz standing there in the moonlight.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, “and I suppose I could wear a kilt to our wedding.”

Jemma feels that glow in her heart again, one that’s only attributable to him and nothing else. “Really? Even though your legs would look funny.”

He narrows his eyes at her before relenting. “I’d do my best to power through.”

“You’re quite the man, Leopold Fitz,” she decides. “Powering through for the sake of those millions of viewers all over the world.”

From the front, Tom calls, “We better be off now, your royal highness.”

Fitz just looks at her with that half-smile of his, the one that says that she’s being absolutely ridiculous but that he loves her anyway.

“No, not for them,” he says, bending down and pressing a kiss to her forehead. His voice is a soft whisper on her skin. “Only for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday, Zuza!!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading - I hope you enjoyed it! Please feel free to leave kudos/comments. Please feel free not to. Either way, I hope you have a lovely day and are managing to stay safe and well in this world we live in <3


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